October 24, 2006

It would be better to say "not everything that is stupid is unconstitutional." "Everything that is stupid is not unconstitutional" can be read to mean that every stupid thing is constitutional, when plenty of stupid things are unconstitutional. I know there's some argument over whether this should actually be considered a usage error. The argument that it's not usually brings up Shakespeare's "All that glisters is not gold." Why didn't he write "Not all that glisters is gold"?

"All ... not" can... be condemned on the grounds of potential ambiguity. When I proposed the sentence "All the people who used the bathtub did not clean it afterwards" as ambiguous, many people vigorously disputed that it was ambiguous. But they were about evenly split on what it did mean!... "Not all the people who used the bathtub cleaned it afterwards" (or, if the other meaning is intended, "None of the people who used the bathtub cleaned it afterwards") is free of this ambiguity....

Fowler quoted a correspondent who urged him to prescribe "not all", and commented: "This gentleman has logic on his side, logic has time on its side, and probably the only thing needed for his gratification is that he should live long enough."

So, forget about this particular language nicety, I'd say. I'm rather glad to myself, since I was personally needled for years by someone who was inordinately vigilant on this usage point.

Not every ambiguous phase is a usage error/every ambiguous phrase is not a usage error.

24 comments:

I like this post. Usage should combine with style; a good line should scan, or sound right. "I only have eyes for you" sounds right over that melody. "I have for only you" wouldn't. Likewise "All that glitters is not gold" hits all the right beats.

The proposition "All S are not P" could mean "No S is P" or it could mean "Some S are not P". That is why this sentence form should be avoided-especially in law. That J. Scalia used it shows that even the great sometimes nod.

Related to Harsh Pencil's point of speaking vs. writing: this discussion highlights the distinction between how words sound versus how they look on paper. I think everyone in the audience knew the meaning of what Justice Scalia said. Furthermore, his phrasing sounded better than your suggested, more precise alternative. “Everything that is stupid” catches the listener’s attention while “not everything……unconstitutional” is too much work with its double negative.

Perhaps there are contexts where the "all ... not" construction may give rise to problems, but Scalia's speech is not one of them. Like Shakespeare's, his meaning is perfectly clear.

The "bathtub" example of potential ambiguity raises an interesting point. Unless one had been watching all of the people use the bathtub, you wouldn't know whether "none of the people" or only "some of the people" using it had failed to clean it. All you would know is that, before any of them used it, it was clean; and after they had all finished, it wasn't. Unless the context suggested a different reading, the ambiguity in "[a]ll the people who used the bathtub did not clean it afterwards" is just what a careful and clever observer would intend. It just goes to show how much more subtle English is than Venn diagrams or symbolic logic.

Other than as an artificial example of interest to grammarians, I suspect that the "all ... not" construction is never (almost never?) misleadingly ambiguous, since context combined with the improbability of the proffered alternative meaning will resolve any doubt about the intended meaning. That may not satisfy logicians, but it's good enough for everyone else.

And, as elizabeth says, usage needs to take account of style as well. On that score, Shakespeare's (and Scalia's) usage wins hands down over the logicians'.

Apparently, it's just me, but I thought Scalia's comment was perfectly clear. It never ocurred to me that there was any other interpretation until I read the criticism here, though I have a hard time following the twisted logic.

Harsh Pencil pretty much sealed the deal. It's easy to mock or criticize the phrasing of transcripted speech, because even a rehearsed speech is still subject to malapropisms.

There are differences between writing to be read, writing to be spoken, speaking to be heard, and speaking to be read. The ends of that scale sound the most formal (and the first is often convoluted while the last sounds stilted.) The middle two are more familiar, and they won't measure up to the standards of the "ends"--but subjecting them to those standards isn't appropriate, because that isn't the idiom in which they were created.

Context, Ann! Context! What Scalia said, if I remember right, was how Nadine Stroessen was rhapsodizing about the ability of activist courts to fix stupid societal practices and decisions - and in that context of a ACLU conference debate about a restrained vs. activist judiciary - Scalia's remark "It so happens that everything that is stupid is not unconstitutional."

Is not only logically correct, good legal observation..it made perfect sense.

In fact, writing this, I was reminded of Gen. Russell Honore's quote as he began untangling Nagin's, Blanco's, and FEMA's clusterf**k - "Don't get stuck on stupid!"

Now a grammarian may have some issues with Honore`, but when he said it I doubt a single person failed to "get" what he meant or that it was a near-perfect thing to say to battalions of people needing serious and forceful leadership.

(As you probably know, Scalia was famous for his dissenting skewerings of Sandra Say O'Connor for her vapid, opaque opinions failing to clearly state what the heck she meant. Just as notable, he never pounced on Ginsburg or Breyer on issues of unclear language..)